Attached is a copy of the Reading Schedule we will follow for Into the Wild, along with the Reading Journal assignments. Creating your own high quality interpretive questions is really the key to understanding the book, and the key to a remembering stuff for a test!

Read the third page of the handout, and write a well reasoned analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments presented. Try to use terminology effectively: argument, assertion, premise, proof, deductive argument, inductive argument.

Sometimes I make up an assignment because I really don’t understand something, and I want you to explain it to me.

This is that sort of assignment. I know Hegel’s theory of tragedy applies to Shakespeare, but I have some trouble fitting it all together. So I hand this one off to you. Start with the following quote from the great German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel:

“Viewed externally, Hamlet’s death may be seen to have been brought about accidentally …but in Hamlet’s soul, we understand that death has lurked from the beginning: the sandbank of finitude cannot suffice his sorrow and tenderness, such grief and nausea at all conditions of life…we feel he is a man whom inner disgust has almost consumed well before death comes upon him from outside.”

Apply Hegel’s quote to Macbeth.

Is he a hero, in any sense?

Answer in 3-4 paragraphs, 500 words. You might want to learn a little bit more about Hegel’s thinking before you begin. Here’s a fairly understandable handout on the topic.

You have to do some real lifting on this assignment. Not something you can slap together an hour before it’s due if you want it to make any sense. Wrestle with the whole metaphor and idea of “sandbank of finitude.” What was he talking about? Why a sandbank, not a boulder or a mountain? Hmmm…

Sarah Orne Jewett’s masterpiece is about the Maine coast and its people, but there is something deeper going on. What is it? What is Jewett trying to communicate to us as readers?

Take your time and come up with an explanation of the heart of the book. Don’t oversimplify or try to explain a single message. Ambiguity is not only to be tolerated; it is welcomed. What is her theme here?

After you make a clear statement of Jewett’s purpose and message, try a more straightforward question. Should Jewett have included “William’s Wedding” as the end of the novel? Explain why, or why not.

Use at least 3 quotations from the story that you find helpful.

Looking for quotes? It’s useful to have a text version of the story, and you can find it in a few places on the Internet. Go to the site, then “Edit” and “Find,” and it will help you locate the quotations you may find helpful.